Having a lack of words is usually just due to something being more beautiful than our hearts know what to do with. The same way cameras never capture sunsets, my words won’t capture the next 11 months. It’s incredibly frustrating, but it’s also really really special. Thank you big time for reading. 🙂
Preface: Due to where I am located, I am unable to share specific details/pictures about ministry. If you have questions or are interested in knowing more, feel free to message me!
12 other girls and I are currently staying in a small Hindu village, outside of Denpasar, Bali. It’s a life I could have never made up in my head, because it’s so far from anything I’ve ever known, but oddly enough, we call it home. We are sleeping in tents at the community center of the village, where meetings, dance practices, ping pong tournaments, and other gatherings take place. But the sweetest of all, is that it has become a place of worship, rest, and connection for us Americans, whom locals have never seen before until now. The people here are so hospitable, always making sure we are fed, safe, and not lost. We spend a lot of time with the kids in the village, teaching them English, acting out bible stories, singing, dancing, playing soccer, doing hair, and always laughing. It’s very very warm here, so we are thankful for the occasional rain showers, even when they flood our living space. 😉 We are given one adventure day per week, which we have used to spend time on different beaches of Bali. We spend our Sundays worshipping and ministering with a small bilingual church community.
My team and I have had several conversations about how dedicated this village is to what they believe in. They spend hours each day preparing offerings that they set out to honor their gods and to protect them from evil spirits. They have huge ceremonies, almost daily, that everyone in the village attends. If the whole world worshipped God the same way these people worship their gods, it’d be heaven on earth, so we are planting seeds. We are learning to accept that it’s not our job to make anyone believe, but to expose them to the love that God has weaved into every inch of our beings. We’re hoping that they feel His presence, that it catches their attention, and that they wonder where it comes from. We pray that God comes to them, in His perfect timing, and that one by one, as Emily Hurley would say, we make heaven more crowded. <3
This is where God wants me. Even in the discomfort and the uncertainty of each day, He delights in seeing me in my most vulnerable state. Here, I am learning to appreciate the parts of me that are constant, the parts of me that are left after leaving home.
Home. I think about it often. Life was really sweet before I left. I questioned God in the months leading up to leaving, asking Him why He waited until I was about to leave to make things the best they’ve ever been. Everything felt too sweet to leave, but that’s what leaving does, it makes you really really appreciate the things you have, right before leaving. So it wasn’t God waiting, it was my eyes being opened to the goodness around me, and He will make this good too.
I’m the other side of the world and the other side of myself. Standing at the edge of the sea, realizing that I’m closer to almost every other continent than America. Standing at the edge of this year, realizing that I’m closer to God than any person. He’s teaching me to be brave and to be free, two things that I very naively thought I already was.
The way time passes has always been something that makes my head spin, but I feel even more dizzy about it now. In one week, we hop over to Malaysia!!
Sending love from Bali, wishing I could be in two places at once.
<3 Megan
